


a song, synaptic

by Anonymous



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Sword lesbians, bc i'm spitballing at a game that isn't released yet, enemies to lovers speedrun, has ocs but they're used specifically to forward story, in the most literal sense, lace is a silkmoth, no beta we die like Pale King, so might as well tag it, this used to be a one-shot but it grew legs and a plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There was a calculation to her moves, almost choreographic—like this battle was a dance etched into muscle, so routine it seemed effortless. White dancer. Despite her vehement refusal to place a name to her enemies, she’d started calling her such.entrenched in the guts of a foreign kingdom, a little spider meets her match
Relationships: Hornet/Lace (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30
Collections: Anonymous





	a song, synaptic

**Author's Note:**

> brain: write fic about a game you never played  
> brain: also it’s set in its sequel that hasn’t been released yet  
> brain: with two characters that have one confirmed scene of dialogue between them  
> me: why  
> brain: you gotta

They stowed her in a gilded cage etched in immobilizing charms, bound her limbs in braided vines and ransacked her cloak for valuables. They confiscated her needle too; paralyzed and bereft of her weapon, they didn't see the need for further restraint.

Half god, half beast. It was an oversight they'd pay dearly for.

Hornet was never particularly patient. She'd fidget through all her tutoring sessions at the Palace, never being able to sit still in once place for long before she was off dashing to the next. Herrah had joked once that she'd never be able to finish a web—not because she didn't have the skill, no, but because she'd wander off before it was done. Special irony, given her spider heritage, but she'd always preferred spearing her food to catching it in a trap. 

Her captors had marched past the borders of Hallownest, the same yawning entrance she'd stood sentinel and guarded not too long ago. Ascended, past stark tunnels carved into stone, opening up to an vast desert road that shimmered with the wings of flies roosting there. 

She shifted, forelimbs itching against her bindings, and ground her mouthparts impatiently. She needed to wait. Bide her time. 

Cool air settled in the wind-worn chasms, two sides of sheer cliffs connected by a bridge. The bugs were taking turns carrying her like some sort of prisoner's palanquin, talking jovially among themselves in the lilting dialect of their foreign kingdom. Three times she caught the word "Hallownest" passed around. Two times, comments on bringing home a "tribute", rare and valuable. Once, the confirmation that they were nearing Pharloom.

Imperceptibly, the bindings on her cage fluttered—once, twice, before they unravelled altogether. An even greater tell was the feeling of her body regaining control, adrenaline coursing through with the force of a breaking dam.

She flexed her claws and _pulled_ deep inside her, felt soul-sharpened silk cleave through the vines like a buzzsaw through shellwood. In that split second she'd already leapt to her feet in a storm of gossamer, lashing into the brittle metal of her cage. 

Her captors were yelling, drowned out by the _crrack_ of her cage giving way. The force teetered them over the edge, and with a chilly rush of air she was falling, deeper than she’d ever fell. A couple of her captors had fallen with her, their screams of horror stolen by the wind. She clung to her cage for dear life.

The landing was hardly graceful—the cage’s impact throwing her against the ground with such force it rattled her mask against her thorax, but she tucked into a roll just enough that she’d avoided the worst of the trauma. She stood on shaky legs, groping for her needle and spool in the rubble and leaning on the former like a cane. 

One of the fallen bugs, sprawled on his side, shrieked when she neared. She was so hungry. The journey took several days, and not once did they give her anything to eat or drink. Her fangs drooled at the thought of a meal, venom coursing and eager to sink—

—And the distant chime of a bell snapped her out of her reverie, along with the not-so-distant sounds of more bugs shouting from above. 

Right. She was exposed and out in the open. Food could come later, once she'd found some suitable hunting grounds; right now she had to hide herself fast, before reinforcements came.

Hornet turned tail and fled, losing herself in the maze of Pharloom.

* * *

Such folly, to enter a public area and hope she would not be recognized. The damp of the Mossy Grove had barely evaporated from her carapace before Hornet met her first pursuer. 

A white little _thing_ , shoulder-height, so airy and light she’d looked as if a gust from the bellows would blow her away. If she hadn’t sparred with the little ghost a year ago, she’d laugh at her captors sending a soldier she could leap over and do just that, ignoring the pin that gleamed beyond her voluminous outfit. 

_Their size was their greatest weapon, a target so tiny and agile and erratic that her needle could hardly get a scratch in. Her sibling parried her jab midair, held aloft by a flutter of ephemeral wings before swinging, nail poised to cleave—_

Hornet dug her needle into the iron floor, skidding to an ear-grinding halt after a blowback from a block. Her pursuer stood on the other side of their impromptu battling ground, straight-backed and poised without a hair out of place. The spider took the distance as an opportunity to feel her right temple, trace over the new seam etched there. She’d been caught by her pin and it had just missed the socket of her eye. 

Thinking quickly, she unraveled some silk from her spool and bound the wound, preventing any cracking. 

“Healing already? Careful little morsel, or your lifeline will run out before I’m done with you.” 

She bristled at the insinuation that she was meal for a bug smaller than her. “Waste too much of that breath of yours and you won’t regain it later!” 

Her opponent looked undeterred. In the blink of an eye she’d crossed the platform in a lunge Hornet was only barely able to dodge, pin slicing through her cloak and sent ruby-red thread trailing behind her. She quickly returned the favor, flat side of her needle colliding with the other’s waist. 

They both stumbled back, her pursuer losing her footing before quickly correcting it with a flare of wings. She had the upper position, however; Hornet was teetering close to the lava’s edge. 

“Don’t be shy. Step up a little! The fight’s only starting, and I’d hate for one tiny misstep to be the end of our _delicious_ spar. It’s just getting fun!” Hornet could practically hear her grin, though she seemed to keep true to her offer when she backed away. Of course it was just a _game_ to her—she was on home turf, with ample water and food, nurses to tend to her wounds, perhaps money incentive waiting for her once she killed the spider that got away. This isn’t about survival, about moving forward because there’s nothing to fall back on, about spite and determination quenching thirst and quelling hunger pangs because there was no other alternative. Not to her.

She was baiting her, Hornet knew it. Her words were as sharp and incendiary as a weapon, designed to goad others into making hasty decisions, turning the tide in her favor. And she was _good_ at it. But it was a weapon only used once. _Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me._

“I know what you’re thinking: How did I find you? Well, luckily—” And here her pursuer reached into her bell shorts and pulled out a circular trinket. The haze of heat blurred its detail, but Hornet recognized it: one of the unused charms the little ghost had given her, right before they disappeared into the Black Egg. The term gift felt foreign to her, not when all she’s ever done was pay for her ancestor’s mistakes. 

And her pursuer had it, dangling like some child’s toy. Her blood boiled.

“—We found several of these in the back of the cage, and our trackers took to them immediately. You really stirred up a storm didn’t you, little spider? Pharloom is no place for a traveler like you!” Her pursuer was ready when Hornet began her offensive, but she pressed on relentlessly; the shell of her arm shattered under a pin strike, a deep slash to her thorax following not long after. However, she managed to overpower her opponent and felt needle bite deep into leg, severing the joints there. 

She took a few shaky breaths before snatching the little ghost’s charm from her pursuer’s grip. “Only criminals take what isn’t theirs.” 

“Noble, aren’t we?” Her pursuer’s smile was soft and disconcerting against the wildfire of her eyes, no longer able to stand as ichor leaked from her leg. “I believe we’ll meet again.” 

“I, for one, wish we never did.” She couldn’t linger. Always needed to move. Ignoring the rivulets of blue staining her cloak, she shot her needle towards Deep Dock’s canopy, tested the tension of the line, and climbed out without another backward glance. 

* * *

The signposts that pointed towards civilization led to a crowded town street, filled with merchants selling their wares, the cloth of their tents blending into a multi-colored tapestry against whitewashed cobblestone. The crowd gathered there reached numbers Hornet had only encountered in mass graves, a roiling mass of bodies yelling, buying, bartering. 

She waded into it with the caution normally taken in exploring garpede tunnels, heart thudding loud and terse under her shell. Bugs pushed past each other, brushing against her often enough that it was a trial not to rest her claw on the hilt of her needle. The merchants were yelling over each other—wyrm, did they need to be so loud?—like the quality of their produce was determined by their lung capacity. It would be all too easy for an assassin to duck in, slip a nail into her abdomen, and vanish again, blending into the crowd. A hundred witnesses and not a single thing that could be done. 

Her piece of shell covering her shoulder itched. It had been getting sensitive as of late, like she were about to molt soon. Not possible, given her body’s extended stasis, so she figured it wouldn’t do her any harm by scratching absentmindedly at it.

“Miss! Miss!” A round-faced leafhopper waved her over. “Care to try some mossberry loaves? Baked fresh every morning!” 

“No, not interested.” She ate strictly meat, and it wouldn’t be practical of her to spend her rosaries on sampling the local cuisine. 

When she took a look at the odd green loaves, however, her stomach spoke louder than her sense of reason. Meat had been hard to come by, especially after she found out, through painful trial and error, that moss mothers and their ilk were poisonous. “Well, perhaps just one…”

(It was the softest thing she ever sunk her fangs into, her enzymes quickly liquifying it onto the complementary leaf wrapper, sticky sweet; and she was once again a hatchling, cradling a honey bun in her mother’s arms, the sugar staining her claws.) 

"A traveler, huh?" The leafhopper hummed when Hornet asked about the local government, pocketing the rosaries she'd paid with (Pharloom's currency is far too roll-able for her taste, brittle and easily fumbled with; she wished the bugs here accepted the familiar, steel-cold pattern of geo). "We get plenty in the summer, though not at this time of the year. You’re in luck though; we’re preparing harvest for the return of our goddess.” 

“I’m keen to hear the details.” Hornet said, biting into her second helping of loaf. 

He nodded. “Our goddess of prosperity has lain dormant for generations now—nobody here remembers her name. Or much of anything for that matter, only that her original subjects left her and migrated to another kingdom. Eight legs, six eyes, and creepy as void if you ask me, but apparently they were able to elaborate feats of magic with their silk. Most of Pharloom’s spells are derived from their creations—though silkworm silk is much more clumsy and inelegant—and the scholars of the Citadel are still poring over how to replicate the remainder of them.”

“We thought we lost her forever. But she’s back! She’s chosen a messiah, who’s gained quite a following, and they’ve set up base at the top of Pharloom’s summit. Only a select few chosen by the messiah can enter, but everyone can help. To restore her to her former glory, he needs silk. Lots of it. The silkworm villages are working overtime. Scholars are experimenting with plant-based materials. I’ve even heard some self-professed alchemists are trying to transmute them from rock” 

Chosen messiah? Was he a vessel? Hornet thought about the hollow knight, head bowed low and the seam of their mask flickering yellow, and held back a shudder. “Why silk, of all things? Aren’t food and bodies and belief enough?”

The leafhopper shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe she was once a patron of tapestry. What do I know?” 

She took that as her cue to leave. With the pocketfuls of rosaries left, she bought a waterskin, a lantern, an extra spool of thread and some more food for the road. Her weaver friend’s notes crinkled somberly in her pocket. She could still hear his cries for help, the night when he’d been kidnapped and she’d come too late. 

There was no doubt to which “original subjects” the leafhopper was referring to; Hornet had heard snatches of her kind’s heritage to Pharloom, passed on verbally and depicted in tapestry. They had been royalty once, prideful and indulgent like the Pale King’s subjects. 

They had a god, once. 

“It died.” Herrah had rumbled when Hornet asked, her tone the brutally succinct statement of a Beast who bows under nobody. “You can’t live under a dead god.” 

* * *

Steel blades ring together, harmonious, as the two combatants duel together in clashes of light and soul. 

The Coral Forest was no suitable dueling ground; sharp coral protruded from every wall, and the ground was littered with shards, collateral from their ongoing fight. The air itself had a strange weight to it; dense and murky, as if she were underwater, an ominous pull towards the unseeable dark of its yawning chasm. Cold comfort was knowing her pursuer shared the same troubles as her. 

Her needle struck true, and Hornet quickly rappelled herself onto the far ledge to stop and catch her breath. Even in battle her pursuer moved light, steps barely disturbing the coral around her. Lumaflies circled in a maelstrom around her, glinting in the watery light of the caverns. The sight of her glare brought another surge of adrenaline that dulled the aches in Hornet’s joints, almost euphoric. 

With a sweep of her lumaflies, her pursuer took a running leap, arcing through the air before landing poised on Hornet's side. “Foolish of you, to believe gravity would stay me from my prize.” 

(There was a calculation to her moves, almost choreographic _—_ like this battle was a dance etched into muscle, so routine it seemed effortless. White dancer. Despite her vehement refusal to place a name to her enemies, she’d started calling her such.) 

“Didn’t once believe it would,” They’d fought multiple times now, enough that Hornet had familiarized the white dancer’s ticks and tendencies like the scars that littered her shell. But she was still learning; the harsh teachings of Pharloom had branded in her lessons she would have never learned, had she not ventured beyond the routine of Hallownest. Hornet unleashed a whirlwind of thread in front of her, revelling in the hiss the white dancer let out as she was forced to backtrack. The coral between them vaporized into fine, glittering dust. 

Seeing her moment, Hornet charged. 

The white dancer hoisted her pin in front of her just in time to catch the incoming needle. Hornet’s arms wavered like a fly’s wings; she was still sore from climbing cliffs all day yesterday, and hardly slept before setting off once again. Midwife’s chides come to mind, warnings she did not heed about pushing her body to the limit, that even well oiled machines chafe under constant wear and she was but a child in her middling instars. The idea that it was failing her now cut deep. 

However, she had one advantage: the white dancer, for all her threats about ending her life, was tasked with capturing her alive. Hornet simply wanted her gone. 

She deflected her pin to the side, kicked out her legs from under her, and sent her tumbling down into the chasm. Moves to stand, triumphant, no way that damned pest would get out now—

—Before a white limb shot out and latched onto her leg. Her good leg. The bad one, the one she sprained just before the fight and only patched with a thin layer of silk, immediately buckled under the weight. Hornet stabbed her needle in a desperate attempt for a hold, but her claws were blue-slick with blood (When did she bleed? Had she cut herself on coral? Had she not noticed?) and slipped. 

She fell for the second time.

The white dancer still clung to her, her squirms failing to dislodge claws hooked into her hunter’s cloak. Caught up in each other, they tumbled head over heels midair before the impact flung them apart. 

Her back was thrown against protruding coral spines; she hissed at the pain, the sound strangling to an undignified _glurk_ as she felt the cold press of metal slide between the juncture of her mask and thorax, fangs frozen mid-snarl. 

“I wouldn’t make any sudden moves,” The white dancer warned and—Wyrm, was that a crack in her voice? Her relentless pursuer could ever be out of breath out—there’s no edge of taunt to her voice, the predator-and-prey postulating she had a habit of doing before. The fur around her head was puffed out; feathery moth’s antennae peeked out from where her cap had gotten ripped, pressed slick against her head and quivering agitatingly. “I’ve better things to chase after than an enemy of the state. You're treading the end of my patience, little spider, and I am now considering bypassing the live capture bounty just to deliver your head in a sack.” 

Venom beaded on fangs and dripped down the side the the pin, though the white dancer seemed unfazed at Hornet’s threat display. Heart pounding almost audibly, the spider flicked her eyes around the hole for hidden passages, and found nothing but harsh knots of coral. It suddenly dawned on her. “You can’t fly.”

The white dancer seemed to take offense to this, flaring her wings (too thick and warped and stunted to possibly carry her weight) as if the act itself would prove otherwise. 

Hornet forded on. "Unless you intend to burrow your way through the coral, the only way out is" She gestures to the skylight of an opening above them, too high and too curved to properly climb, "Up. If you were to off me now, you'd never make it out." 

Emboldened, she laid her claw on the white dancer's pin. She tensed but did not hold true on her threat of skewering them, and so Hornet was able to push it to the side. Blue smeared across its blade.

"And you are devoid of your climbing equipment."

Right. Her needle was still lodged on the platform she fell from. "Not necessary, although the precision is nice. My silk is strong enough to bind to stone and will hold the two of us."

"I am well aware of the exceptional qualities of your silk." The white dancer crossed her arms in a look of disinterest, although one of her antennae had cocked upwards, almost contemplative. So she was listening. "However, there is nothing stopping you from cutting the silk loose from behind you and leaving me down here to rot."

"Do you have any better choice in the matter?"

"I could kill you and starve in spite." She growled, mouthparts unfurling, though with hers designed to chew through leaves rather than shell it hardly came off as intimidating. “Weave your web, then let me climb up first. With my claws full I’ll be less inclined to stab you while you work.” 

Hornet would wager money that she’d try to stab her once she’d gotten out, but the quick compromise was unexpected. Perhaps she considered them temporary allies working under a united goal. “Very well then.” She moved to stand, then failed to hold back a wince as her back protested. Nothing seemed to be broken, luckily; Hornet bound her thorax lightly with the marketplace silk she’d bought and struggled to do the same with her claws. Were she a true spider, one with an appropriately portioned head and only two tagmata and the proper amount of appendages, she’d have held the ends in place with her lower arms while winding it with the upper. _Yet here she was, Wyrm and Beast, borne of misguided hope for an ailing kingdom,a princess with no people, life and memory buried with the Infection while her body’s lost in the new lands—_

“Here, let me.” Smaller claws, white against her spider’s black and deceptively fluffy, took the silk from her fumbling limb and grasped the other at the joint. Like everything Hornet had seen of her thus far, the white dancer worked with ruthless efficiency; she flattened the thread and bound it with enough tension to staunch but not to constrict, wrapping around the cuts on her tarsus in movements to fast to follow. It was when she propped up and started binding the other one that Hornet realized she’d been standing still like a stunned tiktik. 

“I...thank you.” She flexed her claws to test their mobility—she’d taken care to wrap around the joints but not on them, leaving her free to grab and maneuver them. It was kingdoms better than Hornet herself would be able to accomplish. “I wasn’t aware you could…” 

She trailed off, her thought tapering like loose thread. 

That she was good at something other than threatening others with their demise? That despite their odd sides of the battlefield, there was a lot to admire about her? That being pinned and beheaded would be more preferable to _this_ , this odd, almost amiable truce between two souls who’ve tried to kill each other, time and time again? 

The white dancer—moth?—stood back to appraise her work, before quickly looking away. “I’ve handled silk since birth. Can’t have you slipping on your own blood and skewered on the walls now do we, little morsel?” She sat down, pulling off her cap and sewing the seams together. “My competitors may have already noticed my absence, and have sent their own patrol this way. You do not have all day.” 

Hornet nodded, letting soul rush along the lines of silk to speed up the healing process. It was harder to focus soul on market-bought silk than her own, but still doable with effort. It glowed softly as she began scaling the coral. If the white dancer noticed, she gave no indication of it. 

Weaving a ladder was simple, almost therapeutic in how instinctual the act was. A memory: Herrah, with a hatchling Hornet bundled to the front of her thorax, humming a Deepsong ditty as she drew silk over the walls of her new den. It was much smaller than her old one, the one with Hornet’s crib and bug carapaces littered like toys over the silken ground, and the new den smelled of dust and damp and nothing like Mother. Grumbling, Hornet turned her head and watched Herrah work. Weaverspeak was a complex language, an interwoven series of pictograms closest to the primal ways of old bugs and their gods, forces of nature long forgotten. Herrah had embroidered the entirety of her new den with it. _You’ll learn to read it when you’re older,_ she purred, pleased as her daughter followed the movement of her claw like it was a gruzzfly, _your kin will teach what I cannot_. 

(It was only when the Pale King called that it dawned on Hornet that it wasn’t her new den; it was her tomb, where she lay like a corpse that couldn’t rot, this sacrificial idol’s facsimile of her mother. And the Weakerspeak on the walls? They were for her, she recognizes the sigil of her face in the patterns, but for the life of her she cannot seem to decipher them.) 

“It’s done.” The lines themselves were more crooked than she’d liked—aiming with her spinnerets was hard, especially when she relied on her needle for precision—but the threads would hold. She itched to straighten it (make it like Mother’s, when she wove stars into her ceiling when Hornet's worst problems were nothing but bedtime nightmares) but things did not need to be perfect to serve their purpose. Wordlessly, the white dancer put her cap back on and began to climb. 

She watched her disappear over the ledge before following suit. 

The lines at the top branched outwards so that, in the likely event the white dancer was waiting to stab her at the top, she’d be able to dodge. When something extended over the edge, that was exactly what she did. It took three sideways hops for her to realize the white dancer wasn’t holding anything. She was trying to help her up. 

“I appreciate the offer, but I’m capable of climbing up myself.” The paranoia of nights spent a pin drop’s away from waking and greeting wanderers with the tip of her blade was carved too deep into her habits to do anything else. 

The white dancer signed before stepping aside. Hornet hefted herself over the ledge and grabbed her needle, eyes never leaving the moth as she did so. 

“Whoops, looks like my clothes have gotten soiled. Can’t return to town looking like that. Capturing the little spider will have to wait just a while longer.” Bewildered, Hornet watched as the white dancer bent down and began to pat the sand from her pants. 

She looked up sharply at Hornet. “Did something get knocked out when you fell? I’m giving you a head start. Go before I regret this.” 

Her pursuer was offering her a chance to get away, and yet Hornet couldn’t help flaring her cloak at her. She was tired of running, tired of being chased, tired of being tired, and spiders were not known for their even tempers. “You’re not the only hunter who wants my head. There’s this...assassin with the whip-like beak, and his companions. What does you kingdom want with me that they haven’t gotten from any of my other kin they’ve captured?” 

The white dancer’s eyes steeled over. “That is not for me to divulge.” 

Fine. She’ll dismantle the underpinnings of regime by herself. Hornet huffs loud enough for the white dancer to hear and stalks off—she is not running, she is _walking_ —while the moth calls after her: “Take care. I’ll be looking forward to capturing you once and for all, when we next meet.”

* * *

_Dearest Gendered Child,_

_I hardly see you around Deepnest anymore, and in the rare moments you are you’re always dashing away to do something or other. You may feel invincible in your youth and parentage, but a silk strand pulled to hastily breaks the easiest. Take a break and catch up with me sometime. For now though, I’ve elected to leave letters at your nest in hopes you’ll read them in your spare times, if those even exist._

_No, your kin are too strong to succumb to the Infection. Most of them have migrated to Pharloom—you may have heard of the place, if you didn’t sleep through my stories like some other weaverlings. The place may not welcome them anymore, but neither does Deepnest, quite frankly. I stayed here in hopes the worst gets better, and send correspondence to my family through letters. Even with the great uncivilized expanse they still arrive regularly, though in the last few months they’ve stopped without warning. Pharloom is growing quiet._

_Please do visit. My memories are starting to clarify now, and the tales of Deepnest are much more fit to be told by mouth or through silk as they are scrawled onto parchment paper. I’d also like to see your skills with thread—it’s takes a lifetime of mastery for spiders to be able to harness soul in their silk, let alone with the mastery you do with yours already._

_With love,_

[A sigil with the weaver's head. The symbols around the edges are indecipherable.]

* * *

It wasn’t until she was sorting through her tools in the next town over that she found a lone lumafly, perched on the edge of her cloak. 

* * *

The agony was blinding. 

She recalled when she first wandered away to explore Deepnest on her own, drunk on newfound independence and the safety of her promised kingdom. Had ended up crossing paths with a territorial garpede instead, and with a flick of its body it had slammed her into the tunnel wall, lost in pain so overwhelming and consuming and absolute she’d laid there until some weavers came and hurried her back to Herrah. 

Herrah had not been here for her for a long time. A furnace’s worth of heat crashed against her mask. Firebursts flared within every inch of her body, radiating from where she’d had the breath carved out of her, every gasp searing like she’d just inhaled aspid venom. Something keened; she shivered, curling fetal on herself as she choked, tasted metallic in the back of her throat.

The assassin bug removed the heel of his armored boot from the center of her abdomen. looking down at her in disdain. “Hmph. Your bounty better pay for what it’ll cost me to commission my moulds again. Metal doesn’t come cheap.” 

He was, of course, referring to the smoking pile of machinery and warped steel plates she’d left in her wake, the remains of a crab golem and it’s laser-shooting partner that he worked with. Hornet spat blood at his feet, feeling smug when he backpedaled, beak curling in disgust. The smugness soon vanished when he kicked her in retaliation. Had she not been drained of soul, he would be reduced to unrecognizable slivers. 

She wasn’t dumb as to believe she’d escape Pharloom; it was just a matter of when. She’d hoped she’d be further into finding the spider population before this, but more than halfway across the kingdom later and she’s prone on the ground before her enemy with distressingly little idea of their whereabouts. 

“May you die in an unmarked grave, forgotten by everyone you know.” She managed, baring her fangs for extra effect. His eyes darken. 

“Sharpe? I saw your moulds outside and they’re—oh.” The white dancer’s voice was immediately recognizable, cutting through the pounding through her head. Pin strapped to her hip, cap repaired (or swapped for a new one), and caught entirely unawares by the situation at hand.

 _Of course they were working together_. Bitter, that this is how they’ll meet again—curled up with the remnants of edging too close to an explosion splayed across her shell, probably looking like she took a tumble with the Abyss. Hornet glared to the best of her ability with one eye swelled shut and the white dancer stared back, bewilderment clear. 

So focused was Hornet on her that she didn’t notice Sharpe creeping up behind her until cold metal clamped across her legs. 

“What—get off!” She found the strength to flip over and fling her arm towards her needle, but something wrenched from behind her back and she crashed face-first in a way that made her vision shatter. Her forelimbs were bound together by hard metal that refused to give no matter how many times she ran strengthened silk over it. 

“I wouldn’t bother,” Sharpe said, perhaps noticing her threads shimmering on the metal. He bent down and, unfazed by her repertoire of Deepnest, Hive, and Hallownest swears, removed her needle to run his grubby claws over the etchings. “Those are prison cuffs, forged to withstand the strength of those bound to them. Save your silk.” 

“Little spider looks one more punch away from fainting, doesn’t she?” The white dancer observed, her voice growing closer. Hornet would have gritted her chelicerae if it didn’t hurt her entire jaw. “It reflects poorly on you to bring her to the Citadel like this. Dead spiders produce no silk.” 

Sharpe huffed. “No congratulations? No thanks? No ‘Gee, Sharpe, I’m impressed by your skill and now consider you the vastly superior hunter’? I’m offended, Lace. I should’ve expected this, that when you asked for a peace treaty you’d later come begging at my doorstep for a cut of _my_ prize, after you let her slip through your claws multiple times.” 

“You agreed to my offer of splitting the prize, don’t forget.” The white dancer—Lace?—drew herself up so she was eye to eye with Sharpe. “I know more about field medicine than you, and I can bet all my rosary strings that if you don’t let me treat her right here, right now, you might as well be presenting her dead body to the Messiah. Either you relinquish the little spider until i’m able to heal her and reap the rewards, or reject my generous offer and be left with a small death bounty.”

“Why do you insist—” Sharpe stopped, then snapped his beak in frustration. “ _Fine_. But you better keep to your promise, or I'll be setting fire to those wings of yours.”

“Delicious! Maybe you have some sense in that head of yours after all.” 

Hornet kept silent, eyes shut as the sharp edges of her pain rise and fell with each shuddering heave of her lungs. If she blocks out the noise she can pretend she's in Hallownest again, wounded by some hunting mishap and left to fend for herself. She'd simply lay there and guide herself through breathing exercises until she felt well enough to treat any wounds. There was no use shouting, or crying; she's never received help in a long, long time.

“She’s light, even for a tiny morsel like her.” 

“The Citadel’s been tightening security, and there’s guard stations posted outside every major settlement. I’d wager she’s been putting off restocking in favor of remaining undercover. Sure doesn’t hit like someone malnourished though. Barbarian brute almost slashed my beak clean off.” 

“You look better without it. Hold on, I’ll—” 

Something burst in the center of her vision, white streaks fluttering like charged lumaflies before they, one by one, flickered out. 

**Author's Note:**

> first fic in the fandom! like i mentioned in the tags this was intended to be a one-shot and not like...9k words and counting...but i uh, got carried away. because this fic went through little to no planning at all i dearly apologize if the pacing and themes seem disjointed ;;__;; i currently have my own version of what's happening in pharloom, which'll be revealed in the later chapters
> 
> if you see any typos please let me know in the comments!


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